"The immune system is an ideal model for studying all
sorts of biochemical processes - development, the regulation of gene
expression, alternative splicing and cellular stress responses, to mention only
a few." - Anjana Rao, Ph.D.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Rao
received her undergraduate and master's degrees from Osmania University in
India and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. After many years as a faculty member at the Harvard Medical
School and the Immune Disease Institute in Boston, she joined the La Jolla
Institute in 2010. She has worked
on signaling and gene transcription for many years, is a member of numerous
advisory panels, and has received several major awards.

research focus

Our research has been focused on understanding how signalling pathways control gene expression, using T cells and other cells of the immune system as models. There are several aspects to our research. We are particularly interested in a pathway of gene expression that is regulated by calcium influx into many different types of cells, including cells of the immune system, neurons, and cells in heart, muscle, bone and skin: it involves a calcium sensor in the endoplasmic reticulum, STIM, which couples to a calcium channel in the plasma membrane, ORAI. The increased calcium concentration in the cytoplasm activates a phosphatase, calcineurin, which dephosphorylates and sends a transcription factor, NFAT, to the nucleus. NFAT turns on a large number of genes, in a manner appropriate to the cell type and mode of stimulation. We have also used T cells to study how gene expression programmes are modulated by stress pathways and during cell differentiation. Finally, we are investigating how the TET family of 5-methylcytosine hydroxylases affects DNA methylation patterns and gene expression in embryonic and haematopoietic stem cells. TET proteins appear to be essential regulators of ES cell pluripotency, and their dysegulation is frequently associated with cancer.

We are using RNA interference screens, mice with targeted alterations of genes, high-throughput sequencing and other technologies to analyze how genes are regulated and how loss of function of certain proteins leads to diseases such as autoimmunity, immune deficiencies, developmental defects and cancer. The hope is that the research will provide information that could lead to new therapies based on altering gene function.